Luscinia megarhynchos
The common nightingale, rufous nightingale or simply nightingale, is a small passerine bird which is known for its powerful and beautiful song, often described as one of the most beautiful sounds in nature. An Old World flycatcher, it belongs to a group of more terrestrial species, often called chats. Its range partly overlaps with that of the more northerly thrush nightingale, a closely related species with which hybrids have occurred.

Warrieboy · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- common nightingalePBDB
- Sits inside
- LusciniaPBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Muscicapidae
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Muscicapidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Muscicapidae
- Mass
- 2.65 gWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 129 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Luscinia megarhynchos on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
2 occurrences- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene50%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Luscinia megarhynchos and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Luscinia megarhynchos and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
87 taxa- Alauda arvensis2 sites
- Corvus monedula2 sites
- Erithacus rubecula2 sites
- Motacilla alba2 sites
- Oenanthe oenanthe2 sites
- Turdus philomelos2 sites
- Turdus viscivorus2 sites
- Acrocephalus arundinaceus1 site
- Alle alle1 site
- Anguis fragilis1 site
- Anthus pratensis1 site
- Anthus spinoletta1 site
- Anthus trivialis1 site
- Apodemus sylvaticus1 site
- Apus apus1 site
- Aquila chrysaetos1 site
- Archaeolacerta bedriagae1 site
- Bufo bufo1 site
- Bufo calamita1 site
- Bufo viridis1 site
- Calcarius lapponicus1 site
- Calidris canutus1 site
- Carduelis carduelis1 site
- Cepphus grylle1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Luscinia megarhynchos, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
2 references- A catalogue of British Pleistocene birds identified by Colin JO Harrison and stored in the Natural History Museum, London, (Department of Palaeontology)1
- Biostratigraphy of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in Corsica and the role of man in the Holocene faunal turnover1
Each of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Luscinia megarhynchos
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Warrieboy
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Luscinia megarhynchos · nhmuk:zoo:S/1968.4.14
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itLuscinia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brehm 1831